This evening I told him about Jane and Hannah, and we had a long talk as the fire bubbled and sighed—about death. Cornelius has come to feel that people make their deaths as they make their lives, but I wonder. Sometimes a final illness is so cruel it feels unfair. There is no chance to make anything, only endure as best one can. My father’s death was like that. He was so drugged at the end that he was no longer really a human being. But Jane, the blessed creature, is dying in wisdom as she lived. She calls herself a baby, and it is true in one way—her eyes have the absolutely clear, deep look that a baby’s have, a transparency that seems to open to things we can’t see. There is nothing of the dying animal about her except weakness. And one must hope that she will slip away in that sleep that she told me is more awake than waking for her these days.

Cornelius was most interested in this. He has told me before that when he dozes off he feels as if some door below consciousness opened very softly and he “gets in touch,” as he puts it, with the past in a new way. Cornelius and I are one, and can share everything, but what seems miraculous about Jane is that she has had to prepare herself with the help of dear good Hannah, with whom she cannot share the whole of herself by any means. It is just this that moved me so deeply—the way she has managed to take Hannah in, the laying aside of the struggle as not really important. That marvelous twinkle in her eyes when she speaks of Hannah as a saint! For she really means it, yet she knows. We have not thought of humbleness, of abnegation very much, Cornelius and I, as part of a good life. I guess we have both been rather arrogant until now. Now we are learning. There is sweetness in it.

It is time I opened our bed and got Cornelius upstairs. Ellen has been here today. The whole house feels “swept and garnished.”

Chapter 7

CHAPTER 7